Just completing a research marathon that started last summer looking into open online courses and both the social and ethical considerations for learners.
The work has included:
A systematic review of literature up to 2013 and a subsequent update to June 2014.
Narrative synthesis of opinion articles in the area of study.
Deeper exploration of opinions through a series of interviews.
Some of this work has been presented at conference, including OpenEd13, Utah and OER14, Newcastle with co-author David Kernohan.
I’ve just produced a diagram to summarise the findings to date. I’ve used some of the dimensions of Khan’s 2003 eLearning Framework which preceded open courses in the form we know then today. Many of the original dimensions are still relevant, some need extending, and other new areas for ethical consideration emerge from the results of my work. I hope this gives communities, institutions and those involved with open education on the web some ideas for the types of discussions that are worthy of having, if we are truly going to contribute to open education globally in an equitable and fair way.
Ethical Dimensions of MOOCs by Vivien Rolfe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at https://vivrolfe.com/uncategorized/ethical-dimensions-of-moocs/.